How does your Contact affect your ability to “Qualify” your Prospect?

What does “Qualify” mean for your company exactly?
It is very important to define in writing what a “Qualified Client” means in your company. In this way your Sales Team will be able to work toward achieving this as part of every sale. Qualifying includes: Financial (Budget), Timing (what is the time period the client plans to purchase), Needs (what are the reasons the client needs the product or service), Want (what are the reasons the client wants the product or service) and any other specifics that make a client qualified to purchase your product or service.
The end result of the qualifying process is “knows exactly why your company would want this client and exactly why the client would want to do business with your company”. In this way you will have defined a perfect match between your company and the client. A good test for your sales person is to ask the questions: “Why do we want this client?” and “Why should the client do business with us from their point of view?” If you have thoroughly answered these 2 questions, then the qualification process is completed and the Sales Person should have a written profile that answers the above 2 questions.
Additionally, it is a really good idea to have an example of an “ideal profile” from your company’s point of view, so all salespeople can use it as part of your training process and can refer to it later while in the hustle and bustle of the sales cycle itself.
Eight Keys to effective Qualifying:

1. Use referrals or client’s endorsements of your products or services whenever possible: Using your current clients to provide you a referral or endorsement is one of the first keys to getting a new client through the qualification process. The willingness of the new client to open up to you are much higher if they know you are trusted by one of their friends or colleagues.
2. Do your homework: Part of showing you really care is doing your homework about your potential client before you contact them. That way you have a good understanding of that client before you make the contact. The client will also recognize that you cared enough to take the time to find out about them before you meet.
3. Make real Contact: It is vital to make REAL contact and establish communication with your client so that they are more willing to talk with you.
4. Make the client feel important: Give the client the importance they deserve. They have agreed to meet with you and give you some of their time. That means you would give them your full attention during the meeting without cell phone distractions or other things that would show them that they are not as important to you as other things on your mind. When you are with the client, you should give 100% attention to them.
5. Trust: Part of making REAL contact is that you establish trust with the client in order to effectively achieve the end result of Qualification. As you can see from defining the Qualification step above, there is quite a lot of information needed from the client in order to achieve the end result. The client normally will not provide the detail needed to complete the Qualifying step unless they trust the sales person. This would include keeping simple agreements like showing up to the appointments on-time. Following up with further communication by the agreed upon time.
6. Let the client know the purpose of the initial meeting. The sales person should also let the client know that the purpose of getting this information is to really find out if they are a match and should work together. Clients time is valuable as well and if you can help them to speed up their decision making process, most clients will appreciate this very much.
7. Make the client feel comfortable with you as their sales person. There is a certain comfort level needed for a client to “open up” and tell you what they are thinking. The key to this is to approach the client with a view to help them. It is the sales persons’ job to guide the client through the process so that they can make the right decision. The sales person who recognizes the fact that neither the client nor the sales person knows whether or not they should do business together until the qualification process is done, will effectively put the client at ease.
8. Follow up in writing after your appointments: Put in writing your understanding of the clients’ point of view as well as any agreements you felt were made in the meeting or phone appointment and send it to the client for verification. Follow up by phone or in person to give the client the opportunity to agree or clarify any points of the meeting from their point of view. In this way, you have full established mutual understanding between you and the client as part of the completion of the Qualification step.

 
Overall, the key to closing a higher percentage of sales is the ability to effectively contact and qualify your sales prospects. For more keys to effective sales ability, go to SELLability.com and take the Sales Skills Assessment test. I wish you continuous improvement in your closing rates!
© 2013 SELLability Technologies LLC. All Rights Reserved.